Q-Tip and Phife were smart, humorous rappers living in Queens. They met in high school, and then also befriended the guys from the Jungle Brothers and De La Soul. They wanted to call themselves Quest, but Afrika Baby Bam said they should label themselves as a tribe—A Tribe Called Quest.
New enthusiasts for tribal Afrocentrism themselves, the Tribe agreed, and a new thing came into being.
The Tribe were all thinkers, and all outsiders of sorts. Q-Tip was shamelessly nasal, glasses-wearing and goofy in performance, although typically quite serious in interviews. Phife identified himself early on as "the funky diabetic" and "the five footer," a proud short guy with the occasional Napoleon complex line but mostly just a lot of confidence. Ali Shaheed Muhammad, the quietest of the crew, became one of the most influential DJs around even though he took a backseat in later ATCQ work.
Together, they stood out from the likes of N.W.A. on the one hand and MC Hammer on the other. Instead, they were an early formula for what came to be known as "alternative" hip-hop.
The Tribe rejects the label "alternative," but they do all agree that it was their fearlessness as individuals that made the group what it was. Here's what Ali had to say:
We weren’t a bubble gum act. For us, the music had to bang, so people could feel it, but we had to put something on top of it to make it relevant to who we were as a group. [...] We had to be true to who we were in order to be effective. I think that was the best part. We were kids back then, and we really didn’t know what we were doing. I don’t want to sound like we had this grand plan on a chalkboard and executed it. If you take the words from our album, the music and movement was just instinctive. Some of it was ancestral and some of it we had no freaking idea or clue what we were doing, but we knew we were doing it. (Source)
Phife echoes that sentiment precisely. "We just tried extremely hard to be ourselves in an era when every MC or musician played their part or position," he said in 2005. "It was hard not to be like everyone else, but we prided ourselves on being original. Being consistent as well as consistently being ourselves is our legacy." (Source)
"Can I Kick It?" is one of the earliest examples of the new Tribe form: laid-back, rock and jazz inspired, quirky and funny, and so original that it's almost impenetrable and certainly inimitable.
They don't love the label "alternative" (who would?), but Q-Tip is happy to take credit for originality. "Either you thuggin', or you 'backpacking it.' [...] It's divisive to say one against the other but there are different strands that exist within the form," he said in an interview. "I think our legacy is that we pioneered one of them." (Source)